Weekly Dish

Finally, air I can breathe.

This has been a cool week for September in Louisiana: nothing drastic, mind you, but a hint, an ever-so-slight breeze, whispering the promise of seasonal change. And a hint is all I need to breathe deeply on my walks through campus, filling my lungs with air that is lightened by the chill it carries, leaving behind that old, saggy heaviness of late, damp summer. At least for a time, and a time I plan to enjoy.

That’s the thing I both love and hate about weather in the Deep South: it is always likely to change. People around here often say that if you don’t like the weather today, just wait around for a week or so. That seems especially apt advice during this in-between season, the space in the calendar when summer can’t really decide whether she’s ready to give up her time yet, and autumn is gently edging her way in, one tiny, cool breath at a time, as if waking slowly from a long, sweet dream. For the next several weeks, it will likely be hot, hot, and then cooler in the mornings, rainy some afternoons, hot again, and then cooler still, until, one morning, I’ll wake up, and there will be leaves covering my front walk, and I’ll grab a jacket on my way out the door.

Perhaps it’s because of the seasons that change comes so slow to this part of the world, this sometimes-sleepy bastion of a certain staunch resistance to tomorrow looking too different from today. Autumn had best ease her way in without too much fuss; otherwise, folks might start to get nervous. There are good and bad things about this quality, of course, but being a person who thrives in the middle ground — I may be labeled many things, but an extremist is not likely to be one of them — I particularly like the gradual approach of a new season. It gives me time to anticipate, time to say goodbye to the last of the long, hot days, time to reflect on just how lovely it is to feel that extra spring in my step that a cool nip in the air brings with it.

It also gives me time to make the most of the last of the summer harvest, little signals to remind me that the produce at the market will come in different hues and shapes in the coming weeks, and I’d better enjoy what’s here now, while it lasts.

Some people, I know, have that exact complaint against eating locally and seasonally: because we, in this country especially, are so used to having what we want when we want it, we don’t much care for being told that we can’t have tomatoes in January. And so, our supermarkets ship in tasteless, mealy, pinkish shadows of fruit to meet their consumer demand, losing any connection to the rhythms of an earth that produces in cycles, that figures time in spirals, rather than in one, straight continuous line.

I am as guilty of this mentality as anyone else when it comes to certain things; I’d have to make some serious adjustments to my cooking if I had to do without, say, lemons, or avocados for any extended period of time. But when it comes to what’s available at my local farmer’s market, I’m pretty committed to buying what’s in season while it lasts and then going without until its season returns. If this sounds like a big sacrifice, it really isn’t: after feasting on summer-ripe tomatoes, my tastebuds would refuse the supermarket variety anyway — seasonal, local principles or no.

One of my favorite things to savor while it makes its brief appearance at the market are sweet, fresh figs. For me, figs are one of those lovely seasonal surprises: when the heat around here becomes nearly too much to bear, on those Saturday mornings when I look out at the already-blazing sun and hesitate to venture out for our weekly market trip, I remember those baskets piled high with luscious fruit that only comes around once a year. Most of the time, I ration them throughout the week, slicing up a few here and there to eat with only a tiny dribble of cream, or to top a simple salad with arugula, pecans and blue cheese, and I time myself to run out just as Saturday rolls around again. But, for the last batch or two, as the summer tinges towards twilight and the light begins to carry flecks of autumn’s amber hues, I treat my figs just a little more decadently.

This time around, the lovely Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice called for fig desserts just as the last of the fresh figs were appearing at my market, giving me ample reason to cloak these late summer jewels in a heady syrup of balsamic vinegar and sweet vermouth. To balance their deep, dark flavor, I whipped up a feathery pile of mascarpone cheese lightly scented with vanilla and honey. This recipe makes just enough for two, and since I am the only fig-lover in our house, I savored the whole batch, right down to the last drop of syrup (not in one sitting, of course).

Savor is also what I plan to do with these in-between days: Josie and I are enjoying late afternoons in the hammock, mornings in the swing, and midday walks around the neighborhood. The best and worst thing about these days — like the figs I love so much — is that they won’t last forever, so there’s nothing to do but drink in as much of the blue, blue expanse of twilight before it fades to night. The best news of all, though, is that if you miss your chance to dwell in the in-between, to savor the last of the seasonal fruit before its time is up, the season will return.

If figs are any indication, it will taste sweeter for the waiting.

This simple little dessert is my entry for this month’s Sugar High Friday, hosted by my fellow fig-lover, Ivonne.

Glazed Figs with Honey-Vanilla Mascarpone

This is the perfect dessert to serve after dinner: whip up the mascarpone and cook the figs and syrup before you serve the meal, and by the time you’re ready for something sweet, the figs will have cooled and the syrup will have thickened considerably. You can serve this hot, but I liked it better at room temperature.

10-12 figs, stemmed and halved
1 T. butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 T. balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup vermouth, port, or other sweet wine
1/4 cup mascarpone cheese
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. honey

In a heavy-bottomed skillet, melt the butter over medium heat until it bubbles (but don’t let it brown). Add the figs, cut side down, and sprinkle with the sugar. Let it cook for a minute or two, shaking the pan to evenly distribute the sugar. Take care not to agitate the figs too much to make sure they keep their shape. Pour the vinegar and wine on top and cook for 7-10 minutes more, swirling the pan often, until the mixture is reduced by half. Remove from the heat and let the figs and syrup rest (the mixture will continue to thicken as it sits).

Meanwhile, mix the mascarpone, vanilla, and honey in a small bowl until thoroughly incorporated. To serve, place a scoop of the mascarpone in the center of a plate. Surround with figs and syrup. Serves 2.

–Adapted from Sara Foster, Fresh Every Day.

Right after Josie was born, friends in our life brought us food. An age-old expression of community, in many cultures, neighboring women gather around a new mother to tend to the household chores — cooking and cleaning while Mom gets to know her new baby. My mother and sister stayed a few days after Josie’s birth, and I was fortunate to have my husband here all the time — he too is on an academic schedule and so was off for the summer. Still, figuring out what to make for dinner was not exactly the first thing on our minds, so after my mom left, meals prepared by other hands were a huge help.

The first week, my Aunt Anne, who lives in Baton Rouge, brought a big pot of chicken and dumplings, which she calls love food. And they were: homey and warm and delicious, they fed us for nearly a week, and I swear, I could feel my body healing as I ate them. The next week, our friend Kathryn rallied the troops from our Sunday School class to provide meals.

When we lived in Jackson, as one of the only childless couples in a Sunday School class for young marrieds, we cooked a lot of food for new parents. I loved doing it: not only do you get to meet a need for someone, but you also get to go and hold a brand new baby. In fact, I often signed up to take food to people I didn’t know very well, and we met some of our best friends that way. What I didn’t know then is how important that service is: when you’re exhausted and physically recovering and emotionally focused on figuring out how to be parents, food cooked by someone else just tastes better. It becomes more than just physical sustenance; to be really cliche, it ministers to your soul.

And, so, when Kathryn showed up with a simple grilled chicken salad right when my body was craving something green and fresh, and Felicia and Ed dropped off a homey casserole just in time to feed us for a whole weekend, and Sarah brought Italian food the day I had been dreaming of the perfect marinara (which hers was), I felt overwhelmed with love — all through the food I put into my body.

It was more than that, of course — all of these people are dear to us, and it is a wonderful thing to hand over your newborn baby to a friend and watch as she holds the baby’s face close to hers to smell that new baby smell or kisses the top of your baby’s still-soft head or touches tiny fingers and tiny toes in awe of the miracle of new life.

In fact, one of our first friends to bring dinner is one we met through her new baby. Our first Sunday at a new church in a new city, nearly 2 years ago, we sat in front of a couple with a tiny little baby girl wrapped in a beautiful blanket. I will never forget that Sunday because as we walked to the front of this strange sanctuary for communion, I found myself standing right beside this woman and her baby. And I couldn’t take my eyes off of that little face — with the light streaming in from the stained glass windows, she looked like an angel. And, so after the service was over, the couple introduced themselves, and we exchanged phone numbers and, since then, Billy and Garland have become some of our dearest friends.

So, when Garland arrived with black bean quesadillas and a huge container of wonderful, fresh salsa, I wanted to cry — it was just our kind of food, which she knew, and it felt like the continuity in a great big circle of community. When their daughter, Wilhelmina, was a newborn and we were just beginning our friendship with them, David and I kept the baby a few times and cooked for them a few times, and tried to make sure they were occasionally getting out of the house without the little one in tow. Walking with them through the first year of Wilhelmina’s life prepared us for parenthood in ways we couldn’t have imagined at the time: we’ve watched them figure out what to feed her as she started on solid food, how to manage discipline and bedtime routines and, most recently, potty training. Since Josie has been here, they have loved us in so many tangible ways — we have their car seat and their infant swing and their batting gym and plastic bins full of Wilhelmina’s adorable clothes.

A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday when the temperature had nearly reached 100 degrees, our air conditioner went out. Spoiled as we are by modern conveniences, being stuck in a small house with windows that are painted shut and a sweaty 3-month-old felt like a major catastrophe. After a couple of hours as the thermostat inside climbed towards the 90-degree mark, we called Billy to see if Josie and I could come over for a while to cool off. Garland was out of town, so Billy had Wilhelmina by himself, and Garland’s sister and her daughter were also staying at their house. In the midst of all of that, he persuaded us to come and stay until the air conditioner got fixed. He changed the sheets on their bed, set up a portable crib for Josie in their room, and insisted that we make ourselves at home.

That kindness is the sort that, even after you’ve known someone for a long time, still manages to be surprising and remarkable — perhaps because it is so rare in a culture of busyness and self-sufficiency. It is also the sort that gets communicated in the gifts of food. Long after Garland’s satisfying meal, I found myself thinking about it, especially the salsa. I’m sure partly because nursing a baby causes your body to crave good, fresh, real food. But also, I think, I also craved the care that went into making it: the thoughtfulness it took for Garland to know me well enough to know that I would love it.

And, so I’ve recreated it in a myriad of variations, depending on what I have on hand and what I’ve found at the farmer’s market. Each time I do, it tastes better — not as good as I remember hers tasting, but really good still — packed with fresh, clean flavors and a healthy dose of the sweet memory of kindness.

Exactly what friendship — and the food it brings — should taste like.

Peach Salsa

2 ripe peaches, diced
2 avocados, diced
1 bunch cilantro, rough chopped
2 hot peppers (I used hot banana peppers here, but I’ve also used jalapenos), finely chopped (I leave the seeds for spice, but if you’re sensitive to heat, remove them before chopping)
1 small cucumber, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped red onion (about 1/4 of a medium one)
Juice of 1 lime
Sea salt, to taste

Toss together the peaches, avocados, peppers, cucumber, and onion. Squeeze the lime juice over and sprinkle with sea salt. Toss gently to combine. Serve with chips or quesadillas. I imagine it would also be a nice accompaniment to grilled fish or shrimp.

*Ivonne and Lis are hosting the second annual Festa al Fresco; this salsa would be the perfect thing to take to an outdoor gathering. But, I’ll have to warn you, here in Louisiana, a virtual patio party is the only kind I’d be willing to attend: it is still way, way too hot to spend more than the time it takes to get from front door to car outdoors. But, if I were in Toronto…that would be a different story.

In my adult life, I have had to learn to like many foods I snubbed as a child. Vegetables of all kinds, wheat bread, and eggs, just to name a few. I was a very picky eater.

One kind of food I never turned down, however, is fruit. My mom kept a bowl of apples, oranges, and bananas, and one of her favorite snacks was a ripe banana, sliced and covered with ice-cold milk. To this day, that is still the basic treatment most fruits in my house receive — I still love bananas and milk; strawberries and figs get a splash of cream; and tropical fruits like mango and pineapple, a drizzle of coconut milk. But my favorite fruit and fat combination is peaches and cream.

Perhaps it’s because peaches remind me so much of summer — after mornings at the pool, Mom would often drive us over to Landrum’s produce stand to buy the freshest ones our small town had to offer. It could also be that a version of peaches and cream has been my standard birthday dessert for as many years as I can remember. Whatever the reason, my passion for peaches has not wavered over the years, and one of the most welcome signs of summer here in Louisiana for me are the peaches that appear on Mr. Buddy Miller’s table at our Saturday farmer’s market.

Oh, sure, I occasionally throw them into a hot dessert, a crisp or a cobbler, and recently, I made them into preserves. But, truth be told, the freshest summer peaches at the height of their season should not be cooked. My mom said once that it hurts her feelings to see a fresh peach exposed to heat, and although I’ve been known to do it, I have to say that I agree.

Mom loves fruit as much as I do — that’s probably where I learned it — so when I started thinking of an appropriate birthday dessert to finish the dinner my siblings and I made to celebrate my parents’ lives last weekend, I had peaches on my mind. Because my parents were born only nine days apart, we almost always celebrate their birthdays together. This year, we volunteered to cook Sunday lunch, a job they have done joyfully for all our lives. And, I wanted to end our meal with birthday desserts both Mom and Dad would enjoy.

When it comes to sweets, Dad is easy: chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate. In fact, last weekend, when my sister got out all of the ingredients to make his cake, she discovered that he’d eaten two squares of her baking chocolate. We had to substitute chocolate chips. Mom, on the other hand, is not so easy to pin down. She won’t come out and tell you what she wants because she doesn’t want you to go to any trouble on her behalf. Elizabeth did manage to get out of her that she might like something fruity, and this time of year in this part of the country, that means peaches.

I wanted something simple, a dessert designed to showcase the summer-fresh flavor of the fruit, and a way to pair it with a creamy texture. I ended up with a tart, a crumbly butter crust that fell apart, a layer of this creamy filling, and layers of fresh, sweet peaches. It tasted heavenly, but because the crust didn’t hold up, it wasn’t very pretty to look at after we cut it. The surprise sta of the show, though, was this simple creamy concoction — nothing fancy, but when paired with the bright, sunny sweetness of the peaches, it does its job: it brings out the best of the peach flavor. It’s so simple to mix up that I’ve been keeping some in my fridge for afternoon snacks. A bit decadent, perhaps, but summer won’t last for ever. Though, to be outside in Louisiana right now, you’d never know it; the heat is abysmally oppressive. So, if I indulge in an afternoon of cold peaches and cream now and again to try to combat that heat, I’ll call it enjoying what’s left of my summer. Which, as school starts next week, is quickly coming to a close. At least I have some peaches left to ease the transition.

Johanna, of The Passionate Cook, asked for local or regional specialties for this month’s edition of Sugar High Friday. This peach cream makes the best use of local peaches and is a tribute to the way we ate fruit in my house growing up. Call peaches and cream the local specialty of my childhood home.

Peach Cream

8 oz. sour cream
2 T. peach jam
2 T. brown sugar
1/2 t. vanilla

Whisk all ingredients together. Serve over fresh peaches, or spread in a baked pie shell with sliced fresh peaches on top.

In one of the many notebooks scattered around my house, there’s a page inside with these words written at the top: “Things to Do When School Is Out (Before the Baby Comes).” The list is lo-o-ong. And crazily ambitious.

#3: Reorganize office. (If you’d ever seen my office, this would make you laugh out loud.)

#9: Finish thank you notes. (I’m still working on this one.)

#14: Decide on dissertation topic. (Right. At the most emotional and indecisive time in my life, I should, really, have been finalizing plans for a dissertation. Good idea. Hormones really do make you crazy.)

Needless to say, since Josie came almost 2 weeks early, born on my very last day of school, not many of the numbers on the list have x’s through them. Some of the projects can wait, others we’ve tended to as we’ve found the time.

One item on the list, however, needed to be done that week. #7: Make strawberry jam.

This wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except that I’d bought a whole flat of strawberries the Saturday before, expressly for jam-making purposes. It turns out, it was the last Saturday strawberries appeared at my farmer’s market. I know it may sound silly, but when I came home from the hospital, I was really worried about those berries. Not necessarily the money we’d spent on them, but I knew the season was at it’s end, and I couldn’t bear the thought of those last, precious berries going to waste in my fridge.

You have to understand: I ate strawberries nearly every day of my pregnancy. The first crop appeared around November, just as I was starting my second trimester and becoming very, very hungry. And, for the next 6 months, I bought 2 pints (at least) every Saturday morning, and every afternoon for the rest of the week, I would take a break from whatever I was working on, slice a bowlful of berries and douse them with sugar and cream. Like clockwork, I ate them every day.

Every Saturday, the farmer from whom I bought so many berries would ask me how I was feeling, and smile his big, friendly smile. One Saturday in late April, he asked me how much longer I had. He told me he’d been watching me every week and that he could tell my baby was near to coming into the world. It’s quite remarkable how much the visible signs of carrying life will open up venues of conversation; I swear, anyone will talk to a pregnant woman. That Saturday, he also told me that there were only a few weeks of strawberries left.

And, so I added #7 to my list and resolved to enjoy the strawberry season for the rest of the year.

But, as luck would have it, when the strawberries in my fridge were ready to be jammed, I was in no condition to sterilize jars or stand in front of the stove. So, one afternoon, my sweet mother and husband hulled them and put them in the freezer.

“One day, you’ll feel like making jam,” they told me consolingly. “Then, the berries will be waiting.”

And, waiting they have been. Finally, last week, I thawed out those strawberries, sterilized the jars, and I made jam.

While I was at it, I also made pear preserves with the box of pears David’s grandmother sent our way, pear pepper jelly with the fruit of our insanely productive jalapeño bush, and peach preserves with the last of the peach crop from our farmer’s market.

Once I started, I felt so industrious that I couldn’t stop. Plus, it was delicious. The pear preserves are, admittedly, too sweet. They were the first batch I made, and I overdid it with the sugar. For the pepper jelly, I adjusted the sugar, but I underestimated the fire of the peppers: it is hot, hot. Delicious with cheese and crackers, but hot nonetheless. The peach preserves could have cooked a bit longer, but they are bursting with bright, peach flavor, which is what I wanted from that batch.

But the strawberry. The strawberry is perfect. I put the whole batch in the blender because I wanted a really smooth texture, and I added a hint of vanilla — not so much that you really taste it, but just enough to punch up the berry flavor just a notch, so that at the end of the burst of strawberry, you’re left with something else, something rich and mellow.

And, I love it. So much so that now, instead of berries in a bowl, I have berries on toast, and I have to say, it feels good to have strawberries back in my life again. Which is, after all, the beauty of preserving: enjoying the fruits of the season all year long. Or, at least until the jam runs out.

It’s a good thing November isn’t so very far away.

Vanilla-Scented Strawberry Jam

1 quart strawberries, hulled*
2 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 T. pure vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Place the strawberries, whole, or cut into chunks (this depends entirely on what kind of texture you want: I knew I would puree mine, so I left them whole) into a large pot. Toss the berries with the vanilla and salt and cover with the sugar. Leave to macerate for several hours.

Bring the berries and sugar to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, very gently. Simmer for about 15 minutes, just until the berries are tender. Skim any foam off the top as they simmer. Turn off the heat and allow to cool completely. Put the mixture into the blender and blend until smooth. Return to pot and cover; let the jam sit overnight.

The next day, bring the mixture back to a boil, stirring carefully so as not to burn what’s on the bottom. Simmer for another 20 minutes. Skim off any additional foam, and ladle into sterilized jars. Seal the jars with lids and rings; process according to manufacturer’s directions. Makes about 6 8-ounce jars of jam.

–Adapted from The Gift of Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock

*I measured the berries after they were hulled; they filled a 1-quart glass measuring cup.

This summer, my sister came to stay with us. Nine years my junior, Elizabeth is the baby of our family; our two brothers occupy the middle territory, sisters flanked on either end. That makes me the oldest. By the time baby number four came along, my parents were well into the throes of a life structured around sporting seasons: our white mini-van scooted from one field to the next, and later, one town to the next, as my brothers batted and kicked and threw their way through boyhood and on into adolescence.

So, soon after my eighth birthday, when my mom announced that a baby was on the way, I faithfully knelt beside my bed every night and prayed for a sister. Now, as is true of most siblings I’m sure, there were certainly days I understood why people often said you should be careful what you wish for. Especially as I ventured into the teenage years with a toddler close on my heels, prying into my make-up cabinet, my telephone conversations, and my many purses, I often wondered what in the world I’d been thinking. Compounding the dissonance caused by our age gap, she moved into my room right about the time I started high school. She was seven, went to bed early, and wanted to sleep as bodily close to me as possible. I was sixteen, cultivating a fierce independence, and wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

Then, I left for college, and somewhere along the way, we became the greatest of friends. We’ve tried to retrace our steps, to figure out where and how we made the transition, but now, it’s hard for me to remember a time we didn’t talk often about any and everything.

When she decided that she wanted to be around for the first few months of my daughter’s life, I was delighted. When she said she’d also like to learn her way around the kitchen while she was here, I was even more excited. David and I have taken turns teaching her what we know and what we like to make — she and David have made biscuits, loaves and loaves of bread, scones of several kinds, and stacks of cookies. My contributions to her culinary prowess tend to lean more towards the dinner side of things: at my request, she’s made risotto, crab cakes, shrimp scampi, and scads of salads. She’s gotten better at slicing and dicing, become quite adept at simply dressing a salad, and learned her way around a frying pan.

Mostly, though, she’s cultivating her taste in food, which, as far as I can tell, is one of the best ways to ensure success in the kitchen: to know what tastes good. She comes back from our grocery store with a pungent, creamy wedge of blue cheese and a crisp apple, or slices up an avocado and tops it with a squeeze of lemon and a good handful of salt. True, when it comes down to the doing, she’s more baker and I’m more cook — she’s precise and measured to my haphazard and experimental. But what we share is a love of simple, fresh ingredients, enhanced by other simple, fresh ingredients, and that means that either of us can go into the kitchen and whip up a quick snack or meal that the other one will love.

This salad requires neither great skill nor great know-how, but I have to tell you, when Elizabeth and I threw it together as one of the last summer lunches we’d share, it felt like a most fitting end to the time we’d invested in sharing kitchen space.

What remains true for me — and one of the things I love most about cooking — is that the creation of food means the creation of memories. When Josie is older and I tell her stories of her first summer in this world, those stories will involve Harry Potter, her dad’s manic baking, her Aunt Elizabeth at the stove, and a kitchen full of love and laughter.

And that, friends, is what summers, kitchens, and sisters are made for.

A word about salads and dressings: every cook certainly has her salad preferences, and I tend to be rather finicky about mine. I like the greens salted, rather than the dressing (so no salt in my dressing recipe). And, I’d just as soon have as much “topping” as greens, so the fruit/vegetable/cheese combination carries its fair share of weight. Also, I prefer a tangy dressing to an oily one, so my proportions may seem a bit off. Most vinaigrette recipes call for twice as much oil as vinegar, but that’s too much oil for my taste. Adjust as you see fit.

Sisters Summer Salad

Salad greens, to cover two plates
1 peach, diced
1 avocado, diced
2 handfuls sea salt
A healthy smattering of cracked black pepper
2 ounces of creamy blue cheese
Balsamic vinaigrette (recipe follows)

Lay half of the peach and avocado on each bed of greens; sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper (the cracked pepper really makes this salad — don’t skip this step!) Scatter the blue cheese atop each salad and drizzle with vinaigrette. Enjoy with someone you love a lot (like your sister).

Simple Balsamic Vinaigrette

1/4 cup good balsamic vinegar
2 T. honey
1/3 cup olive oil

Whisk the vinegar and honey vigorously to incorporate. Drizzle the oil slowly into the vinegar mixture, whisking all the while.

One true thing about having a baby: you spend a lot of your waking hours feeding your little one. Which, for nursing moms, means a good portion of the day in a stationary position with little else to do but sit still. Oh, of course, there are the times when I just stare at her ears and her faintly receding hairline and long eyelashes like her dad’s and her chubby toes. But there’s only so much staring a girl can do in a day’s time, especially when the days stretch into weeks and weeks into months, and, well, you get the picture.

Lucky for me, I happened to time my child’s birth with the publishing of the last Harry Potter book. I read the first one ages ago, but since then, my husband has been the fan in the family. He’s read all 6 of the series, while it seems like I started the second one and never quite finished it. So, I decided now would be a good time to finish the second one and read straight on through to this last one. In case you’ve never held a hardback copy of one of the books in your hands, let me tell you, that’s a lot of pages.

As luck would have it, it happens that I’ve had some idle time on my hands, perfect for catching up on the workings of the magical world. Because I’ve read them consecutively and in such a short span of time, I’ve been working up to serious anxiety about the last book. You see, I am an ending kind of girl. Not that every story has to end in a happily ever after, mind you, but it must end properly, the right way, with closure and finality. Investing so much time in Harry and his friends has meant that I could be setting myself up to be disappointed. What if the series ends badly or in the wrong way or, worse yet, with things still up in the air?

Like good books and movies, meals should have satisfactory ends as well. Not every meal needs a big finale, of course, but on occasion, a sweet finish makes even the best main course even more satisfying. Most importantly, dessert signals that the eating is over: a sweet something tells your taste buds the eating is over. Closure for your mouth and your stomach, so to speak. Since I have not the time to spend all day baking nor do I need whole cakes, pies, or other large desserts lurking in my kitchen to tempt me, my meal closure has to come in small, easy-to-make portions.

These tiny fruit crumbles are just such a dessert. As long as you have good fruit, the method couldn’t be simpler: toss it with a bit of flour and sugar, top with a crumbly mixture of butter, sugar, and nuts or oats if you like, and pop it into the oven. You really can’t go wrong, and you can make two or ten, depending on your crowd (or your appetite).

I made these peach and blueberry ones at the end of a long week of feeding Josie and building up to the final Harry Potter. And, well, without spoiling anything for those of you who aren’t finished (or who haven’t started), let me just say that both the dessert and the Deathly Hallows were immensely satisfying.

They even worked well together, with a nice cup of coffee, a comfy chair, and a hungry baby — a perfectly happy ending to these summer days of baby care. So happy, in fact, that I’m thinking of starting the books over, just so I can enjoy the ending all over again. With a proper dessert, of course.

Tiny Crumbles

2 oven-proof ramekins
Fruit to fill each ramekin 3/4 full (I used peaches and blueberries)
Zest of an orange or a lemon
1 t. + 2 T. flour
1 t. + 1 T. brown sugar
1 T. butter
2 T. chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Toss the fruit in each ramekin with 1/2 t. each of flour and brown sugar and equal portions of the fruit zest. Mix the butter, nuts, 2 T. of flour and 1 T. of brown sugar until it’s crumbly; sprinkle evenly over each ramekin. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until the top is brown and the filling bubbly around the edges.

Serve with coffee, ice cream, or a big, heavy book. Just make sure you choose one that ends well.

Because my daughter’s arrival coincided with the end of the semester (literally—I gave my final exam in the morning and went into labor that evening), I didn’t have much of a chance to wind down as I usually do, throwing myself into the kitchen and cooking furiously, in celebration of the time to do so.

No, instead, I started off my summer break with a newborn, not exactly prime conditions for having huge blocks of time to spend dawdling in the kitchen as I so pleased. But sweet little Josie did enter this world going to bed at a reasonable hour and staying asleep for a good while, which meant that once we got her to sleep, I could prepare dinner undisturbed. Not that I had a lot of energy for dinner, especially in those first few weeks, but I did itch to do something productive besides feed a baby.

So, I turned to the Farmer’s Market for inspiration and set about thinking how to accommodate our new schedule — what could be started early in the day or the night before and finished without too much time and effort after the baby was asleep? Well, salad, for starters.

And, salad worked so well that we have eaten an awful lot of it since Josie’s been in our life. I have a few basic combinations that I tweak here and there depending on what we have lying around. But since I had promised myself I’d try at least one new thing in the kitchen each week, I needed a significant variation on our old green stand-by. Shrimp are abundant and relatively inexpensive at our market this time of year, so we buy them fairly regularly. The little ones we ended up with a few weeks ago were begging to land atop some greens, so I boiled them and marinated them a day ahead of time to make easy work of assembling dinner the next night.

The idea for the marinade comes from Sara Foster, who calls these “Pickled Shrimp” because of the spice combination used to flavor them. Reminiscent of bread and butter pickles, the tangy-sweet marinade doubled as a dressing for our shrimp-topped salad. Next time, I’ll reduce the amount of sugar and marinate some vegetables along with the shrimp for an even quicker and healthier dinner assembly.

Now that I’ve gotten into the cooking groove, if I could only find some time to write about the things I make, then it wouldn’t take me 3 weeks to compose one post. At least I am finally planning our menus again (as you can see below); funny how the little things at this point seem like such big accomplishments!

What does help me to be motivated, I have to say, is all the encouragement from you sweet people who read this blog. It means much to me that after my long silences, some of you still return with heartwarming well wishes for me and my family. Especially for your kind words about Josie, I thank you.

Shrimp Scampi

Steak and cheese sandwiches

(recipe for shrimp after the jump)

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I’ve let most of my basil plants go to seed at this point, but there’s one that I’ve continued to prune for pesto, and it is still hanging on. A few weeks ago, I harvested an enormous bouquet — as much as I could carry — to make what will probably turn out to be the last big batch of pesto to freeze. I do this every year, and even though hot weather usually persists in Louisiana for another month or so afterwards, and the leaves don’t really change colors, this act of saying goodbye to summer helps me to officially mark the changing of the seasons, at least in my head (and my kitchen).

But then, I’m left with all of this very summery pesto. Some of it goes into the freezer, yes, but what to do with the rest of it?

Well, one of the things that inspired my little harvesting fest this year was a meal prepared for us by my dear friend Jessica and her husband Andy. For dinner one night at their house, they served us roasted portabello mushrooms with spinach and leeks, topped with goat cheese and pesto. Intrigued by the combination of summer and fall flavors — bright, clean basil with earthy mushrooms and leeks — I created these transitional quesadillas.

This recipe couldn’t be simpler, once you have the pesto made, and, loaded with vegetables, the dish is good for you too. I can imagine that I’ll be pulling the pesto out of my freezer to whip these up quite often as cooler weather descends on this part of the country.

Summery Fall Quesadillas

1/2 T. butter
1/2 T. olive oil
1 small yellow onion, sliced into half-moons
1/2 pound assorted mushrooms
2 medium-sized leeks, white and green parts, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups roughly chopped spinach leaves
2 ounces goat cheese
1 T. basil pesto
4 large flour tortillas

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until nicely browned (this takes me anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the sugar content of the onions). Sprinkle with Kosher salt, and remove the onions to a plate. Drizzle a little more oil into the skillet if you need to and add the leeks, mushrooms, and garlic. Cook these vegetables together over medium heat until tender. Add the spinach and stir until just wilted. Add this mixture to the plate of caramelized onions.

Mix the goat cheese and pesto together. Warm the tortillas slightly (I cover them in paper towels and microwave them for 20 seconds), and spread each one with a light coating of the goat cheese mixture. Top half of each tortilla with 1/4 of the vegetables and fold over.

Heat a pat of butter and a drizzle of oil in the skillet over medium-high. Cook the assembled quesadillas, one at a time, until browned evenly on both sides.

We ate these as a main course, but cut into wedges, I bet they would also make great appetizers.

PS: Thanks so much to everyone for all of your very kind well wishes about our happy news (and for a speedy recovery from nausea). I’m thrilled to report that I have already felt more like cooking (and more like eating), so hopefully, the second trimester will bode well for Weekly Dish. Your comments and encouragement have buoyed my spirits tremendously, so thank you!

The U.S. South, as a geographic region, is often pigeonholed as one monolithic entity, all of us southerners grouped into the same slow-talking, barefoot-going mass. But think through just the culinary traditions, and you’ll see quite a variance from one part of the South to the next. Take the simple idea of barbecue. Now I grew up in Mississippi, only three hours from Memphis (or for the more adventurous, an hour and a half from a joint in the middle of nowhere called Letha’s), so I will tell you that barbecue means ribs, plain and simple. And I like mine dry. But just ask folks from Texas or North Carolina to describe barbecue, and you’ll see. They have definite ideas about what goes in the sauce, and those ideas vary widely. Oh, and they also have very definite ideas that their state’s barbecue is the absolute best.

To be sure, there are traditions that appear consistently across the South, but many regions have distinct specialities that you can’t find in other places. In the hill country of Kentucky, where some of my mom’s family is from, they make these wonderful concoctions called ham biscuits, homemade biscuits slathered with butter and topped with the best ham I’ve ever eaten. In southern Louisiana, of course, Creole and Cajun cooking reigns supreme; jambalaya, etouffee, and gumbo aren’t likely to appear as frequently in other parts of the region.

In Mississippi, I grew up with frequent tutorials in frying–a staple method in most parts of the deep south–and what I would call good southern comfort food. When asked, my brother Jason requests what I think of as the quintessential comfort meal: fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and black-eyed peas with pepper jelly. Oh, and homemade biscuits, which we smear with butter and honey. Southern food, for us, also meant wild game: my dad and brothers all hunt, so baked doves, roasted quail, and dry-fry (fried venison) were also big parts of our meals.

If the blogging event Food Bloggers’ Geography: Southern Style, put on by My Husband Cooks, had fallen at a different time in my life, I would love to have whipped up one of these dishes that so represents the culinary heritage of my southern family. But, alas, I had to go back to the days before the nausea set in to find something appropriate.

In the first few weeks of pregnancy, I felt hungry all the time. Mostly for salty, crunchy things. I ate olives by the handful and although I am usually not a potato chip girl, if they were near, I could eat a whole bag. One Sunday for lunch, after a heavy rain had knocked some of the not-yet-ripe fall tomatoes from the garden on the ground, we fried them up for what is, in Mississippi anyway, the quintessential southern summer sandwich: a BLT. Instead of ripe red tomatoes, I used the fried green ones, whose tartness works well with the bacon. Instead of lettuce, I added our garden arugula, and I loved the peppery flavor against the salty crunch of the bacon and the spicy coating of the tomatoes. If this were a traditional southern BLT, it would have to have homemade mayonnaise on it, but since I’m avoiding raw eggs, that wasn’t an option (and storebought mayonnaise is never, ever an option). Good, crusty bread is also a must: I used ciabatta for this one; sourdough also works.

I’m sorry I don’t have a real southern “recipe” to offer, but if you dig around in the archives, you’re likely to find many a southern dish: the South has, in many ways, defined the kind of cook I am. I’ve fried green tomatoes here before, so in case you want to make BLT’s with stray fall tomatoes, here’s how to do it.

I’m excited to see how other folks interpret “the South”; you can head over to My Husband Cooks and find out on Sunday.

This pizza sprung from my current love affair with figs and a hankering for grilled pizza. The restaurant where I worked in college — aptly named the Brick-Oven Cafe — served the most delicious wood-fired pizzas, baked, as you might expect, in a huge brick wood-burning oven. The texture of the crust was nice: a balanced blend of crisp and chewy, but the rich, smoky flavor was of the sort you can only get when flames are involved. Currently without a wood-burning oven of my own, I’d been thinking that grilling a pizza might impart a similar texture and flavor.

The trick, I learned from this experiment, is to roll the dough as thinly as possible. What happens in the cooking process is that the fiery heat licks the bottom of the crust, imparting its smoky flavor within a matter of minutes. But if the dough is too thick, it won’t cook all the way through, leaving you with a gummy texture in the center. We ended up pulling the pizza off of the direct grill, reducing the flame, and cooking it the rest of the way through on a foil-lined cookie sheet. It worked, but I would have liked it more if the crust had been thinner and more evenly crisp.

The toppings, inspired by recent fig pizzas at A Mingling of Tastes and at Milk and Honey, were figs, grilled in a drizzle of basalmic vinegar and cane syrup; grilled pieces of prosciutto; and large dollops of goat cheese, which melted nicely into the figs. David, not as big a fan of figs as I am, was a bit skeptical about this sweet/salty combo, but he admitted after several slices that he was pleasantly suprised. Given my penchant for contrasting flavors, fresh figs, and pizza, it should come as no surprise that I loved every bite.

The labor of this meal is in the prep work; once you get everything ready, it takes almost no time to cook on the grill. The grilling times I’ve included are guesses: my best advice is to stand at the grill the whole time and watch carefully. The amounts are also estimates, as it will depend on how much you want to load down your pizza, how big your crusts are, and how many figs you can get your hands on. As you can tell, this is no exact science.
Grilled Fig Pizza

Half recipe of Basic Focaccia/Pizza Dough or other dough of your choice
Figs (I used about a pint)
Basalmic vinegar
Cane syrup (honey would work too)
Kosher salt
Prosciutto, thinly sliced
Goat cheese (I used about 4 ounces)
Olive oil
Cooking spray

Heat the grill to a medium-high flame (we have charcoal, so I imagine a gas grill would be easier to keep consistently hot).

While the fire is heating up, get everything ready: Slice the figs in half, and spread them in a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet (preferably with a lip) that will fit on your grill rack. Drizzle with a tiny bit of vinegar and syrup, and sprinkle with salt. Place the prosciutto slices on a doubled piece of foil that’s been sprayed with cooking spray. Divide the the dough into two balls, and roll each one out as thinly as you can manage with a rolling pin and place on wax paper sprayed with cooking spray. Rub a little olive oil onto both sides of each pizza crust.

Take everything outside: prepared figs, prosciutto, dough, and the goat cheese. (If you live in the hottest, stickiest climate you can imagine like I do, spray yourself copiously with bug spray first and be prepared to sweat.) You’ll also need a big metal spatula (or two regular-sized ones) to flip the pizza. Grill the prosciutto first on the foil, just until it crisps up; this won’t take but a minute. Next, place your baking sheet of figs on the grill, and cook until the juices are bubbly and the figs are very soft; maybe 5 minutes? Now you’re ready for the pizza. Place the oiled dough directly on the grill rack, and let it cook (we covered the grill because the wind was fanning the flame too much) until it’s brown and crispy on the bottom; it took ours about 3 minutes. Flip, and immediately cover with figs, prosciutto, and goat cheese, being careful not to let any of the fig juices drip into the fire (like I did). Cook for another few minutes until the bottom is crispy and brown. Remove from the grill and drizzle with olive oil; repeat the process with the next pizza. Eat immediately!